February 05, 2011

Perhaps some of you may fondly recall at times a favorite venue for magically finding unusual old vinyl on a regular basis. A treasure trove/mother lode of incredibly cheap wonders to delight the ear and eye. For me, still in my earlier collecting days, aside from salivating over big trunks of old, unbagged comic books at the Skyview Flea Market, one of my most magical places for vinyl excavation during my early 1980's days in Santa Cruz was going to the Goodwill Bargain Barn, where my girlfriend would peruse the clothing by the pound, under the watchful eye of the unforgettable 'Ray' the proprietor (for which priviledge people lined up way before they opened the doors), while I would troll the newest cardboard barrels of records that had come in that week, often digging crazily through a whole barrel full of lps, before they even made it out onto the rough table that they would be 'displayed' on.

Many a wonder flowed into that big old barnlike building, and for a mere twenty-five cents each, the records were often in remarkably good condition after their journey through the barrel and worse. Today's goodie is one of the more powerful DJ tools in my kit back in those protean radio DJing days, and must have messed with many episodes and sets over the years, later to be sampled and cut up even more. It struck me the other day while transferring it that the lead male child actor's voice reminded me of TV's Charlie Brown, who was actually voiced by several boys over the years, it turned out I was wrong, but it made for a fun search speculation. The kids are obviously pros (it was made in LA, where there's plenty of voice talent), as the dialogue is not the easiest to comfortably act by kids. Many of us collectors over the years have sought the elusive third volume of this set of sex-ed records: Sex for Adults. I've never seen it. Who has it? Did it ever even come out, I wonder? Many times lps are announced on the back covers of small label records that don't necessarily get released in the form in which they're shown. The second volume, Sex for Teens, I did get, I believe also from the Bargain Barn, and it has appeared here on WFMU alreadyhere, courtesy of Otis Fodder. Since there was a good response to that post I've meant for a long time to transfer this baby in it's entirety so that the two known volumes can hang together here in a nice warm place. But it's not a record that one plays a whole lot, and I've certainly slowed down on using it as a DJ anymore. So it took a while to finally play through the whole sexy thing. Tangentally, I like how the authors (Nathan Leichman, PhD, and Stanley Z. Daniels, MD) created a publishing entity (Magic Medicine) for the A.S.C.A.P. rights to the dialogue on the record, so if you wanna do a cover of it, be sure and asign the rights properly! Fun how even a spoken word educational project can be buried deep in the A.S.C.A.P. files.

Sex Explained for Children is a very well produced product, however, and deserves some better modern exposure (why? I dunno, I guess...because I'm a nut for albums, mainly). The first side is a bit dry, going over the basic mechanics of reproduction, but on side two things get fun, as the little boy and the two little girls get down to the making sweet love aspect of it all.

As a side note, some wag who owned the disc previously had added a very clever piece of dialogue to the mouth of the little boy on the cover, written in pencil, which I later inked in for more clarity, as it fits the expression of the boy in the picture SO well. So buckle up your training pants, pour a libation, set up the romantic mood lighting and enjoy some fine sex ed smoothness.

January 09, 2011

Almost 17 years ago, following the death of my father-in-law, I came across a small metal box containing a couple dozen 78’s. Along with several hits of the ‘40’s, there were a number of instrumental folk, pop and traditional songs, played by string bands, some of which were labeled as to the type of dance they contained. My wife told me that her father had been a square dance caller, and that these were some of his records.

It was hard to reconcile my memories of the man with the concept of either square dancing or calling square dances. I also didn’t expect too much of these records: my experience with square dance records up until that point had been that they tended to be fairly soulless sounding 45’s, featuring bands playing arrangement of pop and country hits, sometimes with the calls right on the record, with cutesy rewrites of the lyrics to fit in all the calls, and performances for which “phoned in” would be too high of a compliment.

These 78’s, though, were a revelation. While not all of them were great, none were bad, and nearly all of them had a wonderful sound which reflected a passion for making music. Chief among these were a few records by someone named Harley Luse, with groups variously identified as His Orchestra and as The Blue Ridge Mountain Boys. Best of all was a record which has gone on to be one of my all time favorites, and which I offered up before in a tribute to Citizen Kafka, last year, a rendition of the song “Spanish Cavalier”.

While this is, on the surface, a simple performance of a simple tune, both the lovely, wistful melody and the achingly beautiful performance by the entire group are never far from my mind, and all these years later. I still haven’t gotten close to having enough of it, and have on many, many occasions, sat down at the piano to attempt to recreate this performance with friends on guitar, violin and bass. I love the style of the leader (on violin), the variations played by the bassist (especially the walking style heard near the end), and the little musical embellishments thrown in by the pianist - even the fact that the second chord is sometimes A minor, and sometimes C major. The interaction of the entire group is just wonderful.

Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for records by Harley Luse, and aside from a few that seem to be fairly common, they tend to be quite hard to find, and even after all this time, I’ve come across only a handful beyond the ones we inherited. They range from sweetly wonderful (such as a version of “Narcissus” to just so-so (such as a fairly rote performance of “She‘ll Be Comin‘ ‘Round the Mountain“), and contain a wide variety of dance styles. All are worth a listen, assuming one enjoys this sort of thing. I’m surprised with the volume and range of what’s been re-issued in the CD era, that none of these have been deemed worthy.

So who was Harley Luse? I have almost no idea - these records were made in Los Angeles and Hollywood, and IMDBshows him to have been a performer in about a dozen movies, mostly uncredited at the time, typically playing the accordion in a group. Since none of his records feature accordion, my best guess is that he is the pianist on these records, although piano is not always a featured instrument (I’m not even sure it’s there on some of them). Also, it seems a bit odd to think that the credited group leader would be on one of the backing instruments. So maybe he also played violin? If anyone out there knows more about Harley Luse, I’d love to hear about him.

Here are most of the Harley Luse records I’ve found (there are a few I can't locate right now), starting with the flip side of “Spanish Cavalier” and credited as they were on their individual labels:

Finally, here are both sides of another record that I found in that metal box. These are not by Harley Luse, but this record was my other favorite from my father-in-law's collection, and it is along the same lines. The performances here a quite a bit clunkier, and go on considerably longer, but there is a charm to both of these songs and performances, credited to Big Jim De Voone, which I also really love, and they go along nicely with the above collection:

November 28, 2010

During the original 365 days project, in 2003, I shared a couple of tracks by a one time well known Chicago area musician named Larry Taylor. In the years since then, I have received a number of requests to share more of his work. Summarizing what I wrote in 2003:

In the 1990's, I acquired at least two dozen tapes featuring radio performances, radio interviews, studio sessions, and at least 20 completed tracks (both originals and cover versions, instrumentals and vocals) which all featured Larry Taylor. His career included fronting Dixieland styled bands, combo jazz on the radio, and, a bit later, becoming one of the first people to release an album played on the Moog Synthesizer (although "released" is a relative term, and it appeared on one of Dora Hall's labels - Dora being a friend of his, and sometime collaborator).

At least two of these tapes contain an album's worth of material, only some of which is duplicated between them. One of these tapes, featured today, contains eight instrumentals, followed by six vocals. It is banded with leader, labeled "Master Dubs", and therefore appears to have been at least a collection of songs considered for an album. Indeed, two of these songs were released as a 45 ("Snap" and "The Big Walk"), and in a radio interview from the '60's, Larry Taylor talks about a forthcoming album.

However, it does not appear that this album was ever released, and the tracks on this tape, despite being presented as "masters", are not all ready for release. The lead instruments drop out momentarily in the middle of "Music to Catch Boys By", the sound weakens here and there in one channel on several of the tracks, the 13th track opens with the song winding up to the correct speed, and "Three Times a Broken Heart" is copied from a vinyl pressing. Also, the correct names to tracks 4 and 5 are unclear. The box contains three titles for these two tracks - both are labeled "Shiny Boots", as well as each having a separate title. I've eliminated the odd title "What Will Grandma Do With All These Cookies?", as it seems the least likely of the three.

Also confusing is the reference on the tape box, which could be read to credit the entire collection to Horace Taylor. This name appears nowhere else among any of the many other Larry Taylor tapes. In addition, many of the tracks on this tape are found on other tapes, credited to Larry. I really don't know what to make of this, although perhaps it means that Horace Taylor sings lead on some of the tracks. As to the female singers, I believe the one heard at the start and end of "Little Boys", and featured on "Tryin' So Hard to Forget You", is none other than Dora Hall. The female vocalist on at least one of the other tracks appears to be someone named Sheila Page.

The standout feature of these tracks, for me, is the unusual sound of the production (particularly the echo effects used) and the mechanical sound of the instrumentation on some of the tracks. I don't know if Taylor was using tack pianos, early synthesizers, some sort of drum machine, or combinations of these and other effects.

As I mentioned, there are at least a dozen more produced tracks among these boxes, including the revved up version "Baby Face" which was part of the 365 days project in 2003, and if there is interest, I can share those tracks as well, some time in the future.

October 31, 2010

Today, a romp through a few odds and ends from my collection of reel to reel tapes. First up, a raw session tape from the recording of a narration for some sort of advertisement for "Wisco Wonderful", a one-time product of Wisconsin. The narrator here sounds to me like he may be the same guy who did the "Homko Narration", which I posted in the first edition of this Catacombs Series, and which came in the same style box with similar writing.

Next, here are two recording sessions found on the same tape. First is a short series of attempts at completing a Mogen David ad, then, a lengthier segment in which the announcer (I'm not sure if this is a different person than is heard in the above or not) tries to perfect a commercial for the Chicago carpet cleaning institution, Boushelle. The first time through, the announcer even sings their famous (to Chicagoans, anyway) phone number jingle.

Finally, and on a completely different note, here are some young adults, carrying on a conversation while listening to a jazz album, and taping 15 minutes of it for posterity. The where and when of this is unknown (the tape box is unmarked), but there are some interesting points in the conversation, for those who care to have a listen.

August 12, 2010

I had thought that a PR email like the one I got from Dropz was once in a lifetime, but now I'm wondering whether I'll be able to make a whole series out of these kooks. An email with the subject "I got a spinna for a face" reached my inbox. The email began with the cordial greeting, "Yo whats spinnin!?!!?! My name is Spinnaface. I got a spinna for a face and my face is a spinna!" Uhhhhh.........what?

The full (and completely ridiculous) email text is below in this post. I was already going insane over just the PR email and then my friend found this music video of his. This shit is nuts - he DOES have a spinna for a face and his face IS a spinna! This gimmick, man, this gimmick! There's no reason SNL shouldn't parody this guy other than that he's already parodied himself so perfectly. You can get lost in the shiny, chromed-out depths of this man's persona - check out his website here. There are a ton of live videos, most of which are hilarious. Part III to come when the heavens open up and bestow another gem like this upon my inbox.

Here's the full text of the PR email blast:

Yo whats spinnin!?!!?!

My name is Spinnaface. I got a spinna for a face and my face is a spinna!

I am an independent musician from Portland, OR. PDX! I make funky-electro-disco-hiphop music. I do public appearances, get it crackin as a hype man and do an original form of DJing with a custom touch screen and various midi controllers, all while keepin my face spinnin.

I will be out in NY this month from the 18th-25th. I am hoping to get involved with any show or party opportunities. If you know of any last minute shows or parties I can get down with than please hit me up! I am not trippin on any pay, just want to paaartaaaayyyy!!!

I know this is crazy last minute and most likely too late to get involved in anything this trip but I will be back in NY on a regular basis and would love to know about any future opportunities to get it crackin!

July 19, 2010

...was the subject line of the most poorly written PR email blast I've ever received. If I may quote,

“Michael wrote some songs about other people, so I was thinkin‘why don’t someone write a song about Michael?’ He’s the king a pop. So that’s why I called it “Tha King A Pop” If you can write a biography in a 5 minute song…then do it. So I did it. Like ‘If I could be like Mike’ the other MJ…Michael Jordan & Nike. Their motto is ‘Just Do It’. So if there’s a job to be done and nobody else is doin’ it…then just do it. So I did it,” says Dropz."

His Myspace page is more hilarious and very confusing. Why does he have over five million listens but under five thousand page hits? If I may quote from that...

But the real winner is his music video "Tha King A Pop", which is the below tribute to Michael Jackson. A friend made the remix to the right. We're all obsessed with this song. I can't stop singing it. I replace the word "Michael" with "Oscar", my cat's name, and sing it to my cat while holding him and spinning around. This song is infiltrating the minds of so many people I know and doing terrible things to all of us. Dropz is a total outsider. I also played this song for a really long time on my last radio show. The full text of the promo email that started it all is below in this post...

June 23, 2010

Scientists and Experts have been doing some serious thinking at the Large Hadron Collider (aka That Thing That's Going to Create the Black Hole into Which We Will All be Sucked). First they thought about the Higgs bosun particle (aka the "God Particle," and that's what the physicists themselves call it, I am not making that up). Higgs bosun is a theoretical sub-atomic particle that physicists think may be the one thing that gives all other particles their mass. After they thought up Higgs bosun, the Scientists and Experts brought in Dr. Lily Asquith, who is a particle physicist specializing in sonification, the conversion of scientific data into sound. Dr. Asquith thought about what kinds of energy might be emitted if a Higgs bosun particle (which might exist!) were to be created during collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (and if creating it did not cause the Earth to be sucked into itself), and then she made the so-far-theoretical data into sounds: The Music of the Spheres!

What does the God Particle sound like? You can listen to it here, in an article from BBC News, but mostly it sounds like the parts of Fabio's shows where I walk away and do something else for a while. Yet many ancient religions incorporate specific holy sounds and tones, and one of the software engineers who is working with Dr. Asquith says that the Scientists and Experts who have listened to the song of the Higgs bosun have had "something akin to a religious experience." Indeed, whenever I think of what they're doing at the Large Hadron Collider, I say a little prayer.

For ten years or so, the Firesign Theatre has been engaging me in a friendly round of “Stump the Archivist”.

Between 1970-1972, Firesign did about seventy hours of original radio broadcasts. The shows were mostly an excuse for them to riff, but they also played a lot of music breaks, sound effects, incidental music, and total dada noise foofaraw. During those original broadcasts of The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour, Dear Friends, and Let’s Eat, they put the needle on the record about 1000 times, and one of the most fun aspects of restoring all those airchecks (soon to be reissued, yes the whole schmear, in remastered digital audio with an accompanying 108-page comic-book-size color fan guide featuring complete show rundowns, an historical essay, new interviews with the 4or5 guys and their engineer & producer, never-published photos, collages, found objects, scripts, and good God make it stop, it’s just too awesome. Please check regularly here and at www.firesigntheatre.com for an official announcement; we’re only making 500 copies and they’ll never be sold in stores) – one of the most fun aspects, I say, of all this obsessive archival work was identifying those 1000 needle-drops.

Firesign played hundreds of different records on their shows, and they never back-announced anything and kept no notes.

June 01, 2010

G Lucas Crane treats his source material much like the method applied in Peter Tscherkassky's film Outer Space—things are mashed, quartered, revisited and repeated from different angles, and in much the same way that Outer Space lets you rest occasionally, Lucas also allows moments of semi-placid, voyeur's-view contemplation—that is, before the vain, cacophonous rattling of the Nonhorse takes over yet again.

Fans of dark, whimsical, vast-plane cut-ups like the Bladder Flask album and The Sylvie and Babs High-Thigh Companion will most certainly be pleased, though one of many differences here is that Lucas uses cassettes as his primary source medium, using two decks, and actually hammering his fingers on the reels, holding them, letting them go, forcing them to stop and then move grudgingly in reverse. His hands also scuttle over a hip-hop stylee DJ fader, walloping sound back and forth through the channels.

What was intended in its original conception to be a modest grouping of two sets (or bouts, if you will) between G Lucas Crane and Nonhorse, his "adversarial image totem" (listen to the full archive of the Castle broadcast from 5.26.2010; he explains a bit in the post-set interview) became a sprawling, 54-minute smackdown, because Lucas quite honestly became embedded in performance and lost all sense of time. Another bit of beautiful weirdness I am more than pleased to have presented on the radio.

Much thanks to Glenn L for always accommodating Castle visitors, and helping them to shine the best light upon their works, and to Tracy for killing the duck.

May 17, 2010

Richmond, VA had a vibrant art-rock/experimental scene brewing for decades, and the Artifacts/yclept label documented some of the sounds circulating around their hometown. In anticipation of a 3-CD sampler titled Necroscopix (1970-1981), we recently posted three full albums from this era to the Free Music Archive (click the album art to grab 'em) as well as an Artifacts sampler.

1979's Test and 1980's Phantom Limbwere the first two official releases by Bomis Prendin, an experimental collective from Washington DC. These 9'' flexidisks came silkscreened, wrapped in a PVC bag "for protection", and their avant-industrial living room tape sounds inspired mail from the likes of Jandek and WFMU's own Irwin Chusid. They're also cited as the two records that earned Bomis Prendin a spot on the mythical "Nurse With Wound" list. A tracks off each album was later compiled as part of Hyped 2 Deaths' Homework #110 compilation, and an official CD release is available here along with more recent Bomis Prendin recordings (BP writes that releases reconvened in 2001, "after we gained the necessaries to make our own CDs, having started digitizing and archiving our hundreds of tapes in 1999"). So there is much mind-melting Bomis Prendin music to be heard, in addition to these two groundbreaking releases. Here's "N.Y. Nightmare" off Test and "Doppler Shift" off Phantom Limb:

Bomis Prendin's mutating lineup centered around its eponymous core member, along with characters like "Corvus Crorson", Candeee, and Miles Anderson. One of the players on Test is Bill Altice, who wrote the liner notes for the forthcoming Necroscopix retrospective. Earlier this year, Bill Altice introduced us to Shinjuku Birdwalk, a previously un-heard gem of an album recorded in 1981 by Richmond's Karen Cooper Complex...

May 16, 2010

This week, I went digging in the basement, and came up with a set of tapes with little in common between them except that they all are related to radio.

First up is a set of nine PSA’s, ranging from one minute down to ten seconds, promoting The American Kidney Fund, and specifically, organ donation. Following this are six PSA’s - 30 seconds and one minute - promoting an easier way to fill out your customs form during a trip to another country. They signed up nothing but the big names: Dionne Warwick, actor Joseph Campanella and American Society of Travel Agents President Joseph R. Stone!

Next, a bit of a mystery. This is a very brief set of sound effects, contained on a full reel of tape on a ten inch reel. This reel is full of splices, perhaps 15-20 of them through the 3000 plus feet of tape. Yet all but the first two minutes or so is blank. It doesn’t appear to have been bulked, it’s just blank, yet edited up to here. What you’ll hear here are those first 135 seconds. The tape is labeled “CBS Radio Promo Effects Reel - FINAL”, and comes from a batch of tapes which date from the early to mid 1950’s.

Finally, here’s a real curiosity, from many angles. Many years ago, I found a big bunch of tapes, all of which turned out to contain many recordings by and of a man named Harvey Schmitt, who was the creator and first owner/operator of the Ponderosa Family Nudist Resort, in Indiana. There are a few radio interviews, a recording of a nudist “break-the-ice” play which was performed at the resort, and various home and other recordings.

These final four files, below, comprise a complete interview that Harvey and his wife, Irene did, at a large Chicago radio station, on October 26th, 1966, on a program called “Virginia Gale’s Portfolio” (although I’ve learned that the hostess was a character invented by the station, and that she was portrayed by at least a couple of women, neither of which was named Virginia Gale).

This 55 minute program is fascinating to me (and hopefully, some of you) not only for the content of the interview, which is a lot of fun to hear, but also because they contain the surrounding ads, the playing of a perfectly dreadful MOR record, and the presence of the legendary (in Chicago, anyway) Clif Mercer, who announced at a few different radio and TV stations in what must have been a 30 to 40 year career, despite having a very noticeable lisp. Recordings of Clif Mercer are treasured by at least a small band of collectors that I know of, and brief as his part here is, this is among the lengthiest such recording that I’ve heard of him.

The Ponderosa Sun Club Family Nudist Resort is still in operation, run by a granddaughter of the Schmitt’s, as can be seen in this write up, and their own home page.

April 30, 2010

It's no secret that the art and music scene in Baltimore is out-of-control amazing these days, but if you needed an excuse to visit the city aside from Dan Deacon, Lexie Mountain Boys, Nautical Almanac, Ian Nagoski, Ponytail, Double Dagger, Teeth Mountain, Lo Moda, Ecstatic Sunshine, GDFX, John Waters, and and and... the Megapolis Audio Art Festival hits Baltimore May 14-16.

Jason Sigal and I hosted a session about the Free Music Archive during Megapolis last year (when it was in Boston) and we had a blast. This year, WFMU's Trent will be bringing his cointastic DJ skillz to Megapolis, and Benjamen Walker will be hosting a session about oversharing on the radio.

Other artists involved in Megapolis this year include WFMU faves Felix Kubin, Lucky Dragons, Arrington de Dionyso, Lexie Mountain, and many other creative folks. Workshops will teach everything from how to build noise generators, contact mics, and mini transmitters, while other sessions will involve interactive audio experiments, an instructional for how to make music using free software, and even Nelson's electric chaircuts.

April 18, 2010

After the nice response to my first trip delving into the hundreds of tapes in my basement, I'm going to try and make this a monthly excursion. Today's visit, like the first one more of a random sampling than a "best of", features a nice demo reel for an advertising agency, featuring their male talent, including some big names, then an audio letter from family members vacationing in Los Angeles to family members abroad.

First up, the Demo Reel from Cunningham and Associates, Los Angeles. In most cases, the performer is presented for about a minute, usually with one or two ads. There are several men here whose names are unknown to me, but here and there a truly big name pops up (Ted Cassidy?! Carroll O'Connor!? Jack Narz?!?).

Here are the files, with the names of the performers you will hear (apologies to those whose names I may have misspelled), separated into six segments of about four minutes each:

The second tape I've selected for today is one of those "Audio Letters" which used to be so common, from the late 50's through the '70's on reel tape, and on cassettes for years after that. In today's tape, several relatives, led my "mama and papa" send a tape to someone living in England (as I recall, anyway - it's only mentioned once, and it's been weeks since I digitized this tape), with complete reports on several sightseeing trips and activities in southern California.

There are some interesting and fun moments here, for people who like this sort of thing. And if you do like this sort of thing, let me know, as I have a lot more of these audio letters. I also have several more ad tapes and demo reels.

Part one of this family letter is just over 30 minutes long. The conclusion is around six minutes long.

April 15, 2010

Tony Coulter here, with another post spotlighting audio artifacts picked up in Portland, OR, my home of eight months. As always, I've given you my favorite tracks -- the ones I would have played on the air if I still had a show on FMU. This time 'round, the focus is on cassettes -- and on sounds from the '80s "cassette underground." For the sake of optic stimulation, I've also thrown in a quintet of homemade cassette covers, lovingly preserved since my own tape-trading days.

April 04, 2010

Perhaps some Easter morning, say 50-55 years ago, some lucky little boy awoke to find that the Easter Bunny had not only left all sorts of chocolates and other sweets, but that the bunny had also left a copy of something called "The Reddy Record for Boys".

I don't actually know if what I've imagined here is possible, because I've been unable to determine anything regarding the story of this record, including whether or not it was ever released. The only things that pop up on an internet search are links to the auction where I bought this acetate.

Yes, this is not the actual record, but rather, an acetate of the Reddy Record, featuring a young woman interviewing (and hopefully, interacting with) the young boy who would be listening to the record.

Based on the content of the script, it sounds like this was directed at 4-6 year olds. Beyond that, the references to TV cowboys, and just the general feel of the thing, causes me to think it probably dates from no later than the very early '60's, probably a bit earlier.

There are a couple of questions that stand out for me, including: isn't this sort of a weird length for a record? It's too short to be an album, and much too long for a 78 - seven minutes on the first side, eleven on the second. Was there a "Reddy Record for Girls"? And of course, who IS this, and who was behind it?

Oh, and be sure to listen for the guy in the booth, who gives the performer a glowing one word review at the end of part one.

April 01, 2010

Tony Coulter here, with my ninth post since moving to Portland, OR almost eight months ago. Time certainly does fly -- wish it flew in more than one direction. As always, I'll be bringing you a smattering of musical finds acquired since moving here, as well as some diversions for your eye sockets at the end of the post -- in this case, some prize paperbacks.

March 21, 2010

I recently had some long-delayed repairs done to my beloved Teac Reel-to-Reel machine, and as a result, I'm now ready to begin a project that I've wished to pursue for some time.

In my basement, there sit hundreds of reel to reel tapes. Most of them are there because of my close to 25 years of seeking out odd, wonderful, obscure or unexplainable recordings on reels. Whenever I've had the chance to buy old reels - either marked in some intriguing way or simply very old and unlabeled in any way - I've usually taken that chance. Sure, many of them turn out to contain nothing more than someone's classical collection, Herb Alpert records or simply blank, but a good percentage have something at least fairly interesting, and some of them are just amazing.

This last category has included dozens of audio letters, lots of advertising samplers, all sorts of family recordingsm as well as rare media recordings (radio and TV from the '50's and early '60's), to name just a few categories. There's even a whole batch of tapes from someone who apparently ran a nudist colony in the 1960's, containing his various radio appearances and other related recordings, promoting his business and explaining the concept. Collecting tapes is also how I was first introduced to Merigail Moreland, as well as the Star Ads, both of which I've shared here multiple times in the past.

Today, the contents of two of those tapes. These tapes are representative of the collection, although I don't claim them to be the best or most interesting. They are simply the first ones I grabbed from an at-best moderately un-arranged collection. I will continue to digitize tapes from this collection as one part of my series of posts.

The first tape, as seen in the back of the box, above, contains outtakes from a recording session for what I'm guessing was a slide show or a filmstrip presentation regarding the 1959 products from the Homko company, makers of lawn mowers and related products. Ads for 1959 Homko products can be seen here, and here.

This would appear to be from the tail end of a recording session, and I just love the guy's peppy voice, and some of the things that he says upon blowing a take. Following the Homko ad is a short segment of an advertising segment for something called Marhofer Meats.

For completion sake, here are two brief (and not terribly interesting) segments which were also on this reel, recorded over one channel of the ad session, both featuring young people (the second one actually begins with some unidentified Asian music):

The other of today's reels contains 12 advertisements for five businesses and six additional public service anti-drug ads. Based on the businesses involved, it appears that these were all produced in and/or for the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan markets. I'm not actually sure that the second batch is for a phone company - no company is named - but this seems the most likely customer. My favorite is the Grizzly Burger ad, particularly a line about Chicago, and the anti-drug ads. Anyone else think that might be Ken Nordine on the last one? And speaking of the last one, what is the person in the background humming? It sounds to me like the tune to "I want a girl, just like the girl who married dear old dad", but that can't be right, can it?

March 18, 2010

Tony Coulter here, with another parcel of vinyl goodies found since moving to Portland, OR late last summer. This time 'round, I'll be heavily focusing on soft sounds for mellow jello -- though righteous anger also makes an appearance. As always, I'll finish up with some eye candy -- or eye vegetables, if you prefer -- in this case, a mini-gallery of strange record covers.

February 18, 2010

Tony Coulter here, back to present you with another batch of vinyl recordings, all -- in keeping with my self-imposed rules -- found since moving to Portland, OR six months ago. Following seven select tracks from these audio finds, I'll show you a few of my favorite empty record jackets. The image above, by the way, is a detail from one of those jackets -- the complete cover lurks beneath the fold.